


The Human Forest

by Tansetsu



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 20:16:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6624706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tansetsu/pseuds/Tansetsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story about a dream someone had, at someplace, at some time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Human Forest

One crisp autumn night I saw it.  
I knew this was a dream unlike any other.  
Its pure visceral nature has etched itself into my memory, burned itself into my mind’s eye.  
Like any truly horrifying thing, I was alone. I could feel an unease in the pit of my stomach urging me to continue onward on my journey to whence I know not.  
At the moment I didn’t quite feel isolated from the world, merely I was in a forest that happened to fall betwixt me and my destination.  
The air was a kind of unnoticeable temperature, neither hot nor cold; the kind of feeling that lets you forget the reality around you. Like you’re walking through a Picasso painting or perhaps Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory, that painting with the melted clocks… You know the one.  
The sky above was grey white, the kind of clouds that let you forget there’s a blue sky above; just an empty canvas stretching forever, an endless blank space just filling up the necessary ingredient of “sky” in this landscape.  
The ground made no sound as I wandered my path.  
It was an ashen color.  
Not quite white but not quite dark brown.  
I left neither footprints nor any signs I’d been through this path, in this forest, on this strange day.  
Yet I felt a sense of familiarity, as much as my solitude unnerved me. It was not unlike walking home from a night time job at the library. At such dark hours nary a passerby is seen, you are on edge because of the quietness that hangs over you like a thick humid air. Yet you are comforted by it as well, because you know at this kind of hour, in this kind of place anyone, no anything you meet would most certainly be unpleasant.  
That kind of feeling.  
As I made my way through this forest more and more this vague scenery, this nondescript utterly forgettable atmosphere finally bared its fangs.  
Maybe it was this empty atmosphere that prevented me from noticing at the very start of my venture into this land.  
Either way I became distinctly aware that I was making my way through The Human Forest.  
The trees were white, an ivory color on this empty night.  
From the look of it they were smooth. As a child I would pick up sticks from the ground and, using my finger nails, strip the bark from them until only the smooth light colored wood remained, these trees looked as if they’d suffered the same indignity.  
Amid the virgin white of the trees patches of rust could be seen. Like gashes from a knife or perhaps splotches of dried blood. Their shapes reminded me most of when one is bleeding from a wound and showers, the way the blood lightens and becomes semi-transparent yet still retains its color. The way it forms a fuzzy outline around the sharp concise shape of the wound, I cannot think of a better way to describe those impurities.  
As my attention was drawn further from the path I wandered to the trees around me I became aware of their distinct deformation.  
From the base the tree grew as if it were five separate trees that’d ingrown together, fused you might say. The way one braids a tree by stripping parts of it bare adding water and moss and then tying another trees branch whose raw flesh had been exposed so that they might grow together.  
As I followed the trunks up I came to realize the core trunk was only a little taller than me…so a little above 5’3” at the most.  
From where the mast of the tree ends countless branches stretched out towards the vacuum of the sky. I say branches but I would prefer you not get the wrong impression they were branches for lack of a better term to describe them. Jointed like a normal branch yet they bore no leaves and no diverging splits. One simple line with joints that bulged outward, giving the whole structure the feeling of elongated skeletal phalanges.  
The phalanges that were reaching towards the sky, all originating from a bulbous growth at the very end of the trunk. Rather not “a” bulbous growth, but “several” bulbous growths, five in fact.  
They were not perfectly circular but rather ovular, misshapen even. The part facing me was smooth and slightly flattened, while the top rounded backwards, it seemed to be leaning towards me a little. The way one’s head hangs forward after they are hanged.  
Yes.  
They were almost like heads with no facial features.  
The kind mannequins used to practice anatomy have.  
I’m unsure whether their facelessness disturbed or comforted me.  
From the tilted bulbous growth two thicker branches thrust outward toward me and away from me.  
Two per growth, they seemed as if they were fixed in place like the arms of those who’d been crucified. Despite their similarities with human limbs I refrained from calling them arms for one major reason. That is that at their ends instead of thinning into a wrist. Instead of widening into the hand, it broke apart. As beneath the pure smooth surface was a sinuous structure that frayed at the end. It broke apart into more of those same phalanges reaching horizontally this time.  
There appeared to be a gap in the phalanges.  
While some of the Vertical phalanges began to sag as they got longer there still remained an area in between where none grew out. Giving this strange deformation a sense of planning as opposed to chaos, the way nature in all of its chaos adheres to strict guidelines. The way something that appears pure chaos at first glance but actually adheres to a set pattern is.  
The way you can tell a gun has set principles that determines its shape and form. No matter the gun it has an inherent anatomy that allows it to be functional as a firearm. This anatomy gives the object a pattern. Not the kind one inherently notices, no most guns look very different from each other. Rather a pattern that we sense, it tells us “this is a gun.” This is the same reason a hastily colored in right angled shape, and even a gun drawn by a rank amateur who used no reference cannot ever be perceived by us as a gun. We understand what they are supposed to represent, but they lack the pattern for us to instinctively know that this is a firearm. They lack reality.  
These trees, this Human Forest unfortunately…did not.  
I’m not even sure they were trees I merely called them a tree for lack of a proper term.  
As I etched their alien shape into my mind words of advice floated to the surface of my conscious, from whom I know not.  
“Touch them once, and you will die before having the luxury of touching them twice.”  
This was not a threat however, and it didn’t even feel like a warning. It was simply common sense.  
The sense of urgency I felt in my core pricked at my heart and I hurried onward.  
I’d always distrusted trees, the way their limbs stretch out from all sides.  
As a child I imagined they’d been monsters that inhabited the world before we did and through some spell or another we’d frozen them all in their spots. Their tentacles became branches their inexorable life force muted by the power of man.  
Trees always seem to stand sentinel over us, like watchmen in the night biding their time.  
As I hurried I recalled a story one of my teachers told me about the pilgrims who’d settled my home. Amongst their children they spread talk of a place called the dark forest, the darkest heart of the woods surrounding where the Devil lays in wait for any wandering children to pass by.  
   
This was explained as a warning to keep children from wandering off and falling prey to the wildlife of course. But I remember, every time I’ve been in a forest, even before then, I’d had a sense of unease and this pointless bit of hearsay just added justification to that instinct.  
As I shifted focus back to my journey through this human forest I realized I’d come back to where I’d started. All of these “trees” looked the same…but I knew I’d ended up at the same place.  
However  
Something was off  
Something had changed  
It didn’t’ take long this time to notice.  
From one of the trees a bundle dragged down some of the phalanges.  
The phalanges formed a kind of skeletal sack freely showing its content for me to see.  
At first glance it looked like eggs, pure white eggs not unlike those of chicken eggs. Yet they looked smoother than chicken eggs, you know how chicken eggs appear pristine from far away but when you pick them up tiny bevels and growths are on the shell giving it a rough texture? These looked as though they’d been shaped from porcelain.  
No  
They aren’t eggs.  
I knew what they were  
They were the bulbous growths that adorned each tree. The faceless heads engaged in the hangman’s nod.  
And right then and there I knew  
I knew that I was face to face with death.  
I’d thought about dying plenty of times before. When I failed classes at college, when I was turned away from the jobs I’d applied to. I’d idly thought:  
“what kind of mistake have I made? Why is everything so wrong? I don’t know what to do anymore…” and like a typical man with neither passion nor partner to share his life with I’d thought:  
“Maybe it’d be better to die and start over again.”  
Yes the kind disinterested babble of a human who’s never tried hard once in his life.  
Yet here though I’d so easily spoken of ending my life,  
Yet here when confronted with my own mortality, my sense of self-preservation took hold.  
That prick of unease now full on gripped my heart and I knew,  
That here in this place, at this time  
I did not want to die.  
So I began walking faster  
I hurried along the paths between the “trees.”  
I hurried and bustled and hustled and threw myself forward.  
Each time I ended up back at that same spot.  
Each time I returned the bundle had grown.  
From the bulbous heads a trunk had started to grow, and each time I returned to that spot it’d distinctly gotten bigger. That sack that’d so easily been supported by the phalanges was now burdening them to the point of sagging towards the ground.  
At first it was a few feet off the ground.  
Yet every time I passed by it sagged ever lower.  
My own efforts at hurrying along on my journey seemed to always lead me back to the same place…  
To death.  
In fact, where was I going to begin with?  
What was the point of this journey?  
Why did I end up here… in this Human Forest?  
As I hurried down the repetitious paths, a quote from a favorite author of mine, Haruki Murakami, came to mind.  
In his book South of the Border West of the Sun one of his characters describes a disease called Hysteria Siberiana, the part that stuck in my mind the most was:  
“Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking towards the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die.”  
I remember glancing at the title and thinking how mysterious it was, “South of the Border, West of the Sun.” But when I finished it I knew…the only thing south of the border is desert and the only thing west of the sun is death.  
I don’t know how many times I’d come back to this place…but the sack was only a few inches off the ground. From the ends of the torsos thick root like phalanges stretched outward reaching towards the ground.  
Instinctively I knew that I didn’t want to be around when this thing broke out of its womb, when it would burst into this quiet nothing world.  
I knew it was growing yet I’d never once seen it for myself, every time I’d circled back here it’d simply matured a little more. And now I knew if I tried to blindly escape one last time and came back I’d be arriving at my own private grave.  
And so I stood there  
My heart beating  
Fear clawing at my chest, telling me to run  
My legs felt unnaturally tired, as if I was being weighed down.  
I remember hearing that if you die in a dream you die in real life. And that in order to prevent that from happening when your pulse becomes too erratic your body wakes itself up, It pulls you back from the Devil’s clutches.  
I suppose I should be thankful for that defense mechanism.  
Needless to say I was pulled back here, to our world with nothing but these vivid memories and impressions burned into my mind.  
And now, although I go about my life; although I haven’t dreamt of that land since; although I’ve let myself pretend I’ve forgotten…I know...deep down  
That somewhere  
Somewhen  
Somehow  
The Human Forest continues to grow.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to start by thanking anyone reading this for getting this far, knowing that my works are being read and possibly enjoyed really makes me happy.  
> To start off with, this is my first submission to Ao3 and as such I had no idea what to expect as far as the submission process. This ignorance inevitably led to the a sort of formatting issue. In my original word document I used a lot of spaces in between my paragraphs/solitary lines to break it up so it wasn't such a wall of text, however as you can plainly see that is not the case here. If such a densely packed, oddly formatted work bothered you then you have my sincere apologies, I'll do my best as I keep posting to adjust to this new medium.  
> Also, I'm unsure if my quote I used in my story is breaking any copyright agreements or not so just in case I'll ad a bibliography here and if this still isn't enough let me know and I'll edit that part out.  
> Murakami, Haruki. South of the Border, West of the Sun. New York: Knopf, 1999. Print.


End file.
